leaflemming.bsky.social

Any society that allows billionaires to exist will be eaten by them. The first world war saved us from the last gilded age, at the low, low price of a butchered generation. If we allow this one to continue the price will be higher.

Canterbury: nitrate rising in 62% of the regional council's 300 test wells. Tens of thousands more dairy cows consented this year. The council has voted to end its nitrate "state of emergency". NZ's drinking water limit is 11.3 mg/L. Danish research links bowel cancer risk to levels under 1. #nzpol

Insanity. Turns out it's almost half of the health budget under National that goes to private corporate helth, and 80% of all new funding is going to private and corporate healthcare #NZPOL

This government has quietly shifted public health funding to the private sector, lied about it, and is now successfully diverting media attention to a trumped up race-baiting “scandal” just before an election. #nzpol thekaka.substack.com/p/brand-new-...

May your Labour Day be easy and hail free.

My friend Emma sent me these. #NZPol

TWO DAYS NZ registration cuts off in the midst of this holiday weekend (not after it) 300k+ missing voters elections.nz/stats-and-re... No it’s not more organised No it won’t speed up vote count Yes it is voter suppression Yes it unfairly advantages wealthy/older voters SO Get registered!

A veteran social worker once described Aotearoa's gangs to me as "organised poverty", & said working in rural communities meant working with them. The more poverty we have, the stronger gangs will get & the more this government will demonise them. Hipkins is, to put it politely, a naive fool. #nzpol

Green Party releases fiscal plan, promises to increase health spending by $3 billion each year

Congratulations to Pip Adam, recipient of the 2026 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction for Audition!

A lack of daylight between the two largest parties is how we got MMP in the first place. I profoundly hope Labour is punished for their contemptible choice to ditto many of the Nats’ worst policies. Party vote Green, people. #nzpol

Daily bunny no.3477 can't remember the title

There are just six days left to enrol, but we are about 130k behind where final enrolment got to last time - when people could still enrol all the way through election day. It is becoming very hard to see this gap really closing in such a short time.

Just got advised that my former suburb, where I used to participate in the predator trapping program, is now rat, stoat, weasel and possum free. The return of Wellington's native bird life is one of the great conservation stories of my lifetime.

Let's talk about ACT's proposed funding for GPs. Straight up, this is the first time a party has proposed a solution to the fundamental problem in the GP crisis: You can't recruit and retain enough GPs if the working conditions and remuneration aren't competitive. #nzpol 🧵

Opportunity is more right wing than NZ First. They really are just a political psyop to stop the left from getting any real power. #nzpol

On Wednesday, October 21st—Ursula's birthday—please join us as we announce the recipient of the 2026 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction! The announcement will be on YouTube at 9 am Pacific time. www.youtube.com/@ursula.k.le...

26 Billionaires in NZ. Top 150 wealthiest individuals and families hold a combined wealth of $129 billion. Their wealth has DOUBLED from $60b just 10 years ago. But we are loosing our fucking shit about a wealth tax. Cry me a fucking river.

The "controversial" comic with over 43 false reports to silence the creator and the real feel of the people. Enjoy, like and reshare "The Day All Billionaires Died..." By #noneofthisisok

These magazines are where I first met writers like Kim Stanley Robinson, Greg Egan, Michael Swanwick. Some of Le Guin’s best work appeared there. What’s happened to them under MRM is despicable.

New working paper: the Norwegian wealth tax was a huge success. The "exodus" of wealthy people never happened (less than 100 individuals left). Tax revenue increased by 71.5%. No changes in business activity or investment. www.nber.org/papers/w35854

A daye wythout anachronism ys lyke Emily Dickinson wythout her lightsaber

Daily bunny no.3467 catching a rogue penguin

The world at ~1.5°C above preindustrial. Fossil fuel usage continues unabated, pushing more greenhouse gas pollution into the atmosphere, so heating will continue. We are *firmly* on track to pass 2°C We are *absolutely* not prepared for the associated climate chaos.

I expect our government’s plan to replace the people who actually implement their policies with AI will go great though #nzpol

This is playing out much the way climate change is: a foreseen disaster unfolds precisely as the people who could have avoided it were warned it would, and their response is to lie, scapegoat, resist necessary change, and refuse all responsibility. We desperately need grownups in government. #nzpol

www.theguardian.com/world/2026/s...

Daily bunny no.3455 prefers the classics

taracomics.substack.com/p/friends?ut... More of a situationship. #birdoftheyear

Today our prime minister was told a major cost of living crisis is harming the people he governs, and he responded, “Cry me a river”. Aotearoa, please show this man that trying to sound like America’s all-time worst president isn’t how you win elections here. #nzpol

It's very funny to me that Americans represent more illegal immigrants in Aotearoa than any other group. It's an incredibly American statistic. #nzpol

For those in the back: The total amount the New Zealand government has spent on all historical Waitangi Tribunal settlements over the last 30+ years is less than the cost of a single year of the 2024 tax cuts for Landlords.

This ok? Or more important the NZ Govt bond yield is a fraction of a basis point lower than it otherwise would be? That's the choice.

If you were wondering why people are being left to die in toilets in our hospitals currently, a quick glance at this graph of health workforce numbers under the last two governments tells you which one stopped hiring nurses and has been lying about it. #nzpol

Get this! Cleaning up pollution caused by the dairy industry’s nitrogen fertiliser costs NZ ten times more than farmers spend buying the fertiliser in the first place. One of the many ways we subsidise the dairy industry. #TooManyCows newsroom.co.nz/2026/09/01/t...